ABATTOIR BLUES

Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this. Robinson writes an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

THE STORY BEGINS with DCI Banks going straight to his office from the airport on his return from holiday. This isn’t because of his ubiquitous work ethic as a dedicated senior police officer, avid and hardworking as he is, but more to do with that he can’t resist the ‘lure of a bloody crime scene’, as well as being happy to escape his messy private life.

Since his marital breakdown to Sharon, Banks has had a few other partners in his life, including the Italian woman whose parents he has just travelled abroad to meet. But while she seems noncommittal, he needn’t worry. Another interesting prospect will soon come his way.

Back at work, DCI Banks quickly reaffirms his effectiveness as leader of the homicide and major crimes team in West Yorkshire. Abbattoir Blues is another example of Peter Robinson who proves his outstanding expertise as a crime writer as he cleverly takes the reader through the intricacies of a complex plot.

Two young men are reported missing, and after some painstaking police work prove that the youths are linked in a major homicide crime. Bloodstains are found in a disused airfield hangar by Peaches the dog as she runs away from her master, Terry Gilchrist, who has a slight disability from an injury sustained in the Iraq war whilst serving as a soldier in the army. A caravan belonging to one of the youths is also burned to the ground. Things quickly become much more sinister.

Then a retired and successful fund manager finds that his £100,000 tractor has been stolen. There is the suspicion that he might be pursuing an insurance payment, or that the wayward son of the nearby farmer looking after the property in his absence might have been involved.

This case is being supervised by the permanently grumpy DI Annie Cabbot, whose ill humour and staid approach stems from the serious injury following a shooting she sustained in a previous case.

The author creates a storyline where Banks is in the habit of reviewing cases with his team. This is a very effective device for keeping the reader abreast of the story, and keeps the reader guessing as to what might happen next: ‘We’ve got a stolen tractor, two young men we’d like to find and talk to and the makings of a suspicious death at an abandoned airfield.’ The idiosyncrasies of the story are by no means obvious that these events are linked to a single major crime.

Robinson deserves huge credit for his meticulous approach and how a police operation of this nature might unfold. Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this.

That summary holds good until the various themes are brought together by a fatal accident on a country road. The van involved was collecting animal parts from farms to take them to an abattoir when it skewered out of control and careered over the edge of a cliff-face. Following a search by police, the van also contains human remains. The various incidents hitherto are now linked and forged into a single case.

Unfortunately, though, the task of touring the many abattoirs to find the source of the remains goes to the team’s vegetarian, who finds it demanding and difficult to deal with. Others in the team have issues too. The hapless DC Dougal Wilson is the spitting image of Harry Potter and always becoming the butt of the joke, both with fellow officers and members of the public.

Gradually, a list of suspects emerges. One of them is Malcolm Hackett who has changed his name to Montague Havers, to become less ‘comprehensive school’ and ‘more Eton’. His links to the financial world and to the former trader turned farmer who had his tractor stolen helps to unravel a case that has many twist and turns before it is finally solved. Deceit and deception, unabridged differences in the background of the story’s main character, and the subtle nature by which Robinson writes all add to an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.